Oak Lore

©Eileen Holland
www.open-sesame.com

"When the trees were enchanted
There was hope for the trees,
That they should frustrate the intentions
Of the surrounding fires . . . "

- Cād Goddeu (The Battle of the Trees)

MYTH:

• Tree of Endurance and Triumph. Tree of Shepherds.
• Because of its deep roots the oak symbolizes a god whose law extends to heaven, earth, and the underworld.
• The oak is sacred to: Allah - Jehovah - Zeus - Jupiter - Jupiter - Thor - Mars - the Dagda - Hercules - Hou, the oak god of Guernsey - Janicot, the Basque oak god - El, the Middle Eastern oak god - Jove - Picus - Cernunnos - Herne the Hunter - Taranis - Teutates - Belenos - Donar/Dunar/Thunar - Perkunas - Perun - Taraa - Baldur - Viribius - Janus. It is also the tree of the wild ox-god.
• Ovid called the oak the Tree of Jove. White oxen were sacrificed to Jupiter as an oak god on the Alban Mount at Rome. The image of Jupiter at the Capitol in Rome was originally an oak tree.
• Oak is also sacred to: Diana - Rhea - Dione - Egeria - Dia - Aria - Mary - Cardea - the Triple Goddess of the Dove. Mary was worshiped as Our Lady of the Oak in Anjou, France. She appeared to shepherd children in Portugal as Our Lady of Fatima, crowned in roses and hovering over an oak tree.
• Oak Queens include the Muse Erato, the nymph Egeria and the fourth Carmenta, a Sibylline priestess who taught King Numa of Rome.
• The oak is sacred to all thunder and lightning gods. Hercules attracted thunderstorms with sympathetic magic, by rattling an oak club in a hollow oak, or by stirring a pool with an oak branch. Reverberating clubs were made of oak in ancient Europe. Woodpeckers were thought to be knocking for rain when they tapped on oak trunks. Black animals were sacrificed to the thunder god for rain. Oaks were believed to court the lightning flash. The English say:

Beware of an oak
It draws the stroke.

• The Dryads were oak fairies or nymphs who lived in oak trees.
• The Titans were men who had been stretched on oaken wheels.
• Oak heroes include Ixion, Atlas, Hercules and Telamon. Hercules carried an oak club because oak provides mast. Herculean symbols include the acorn, mistletoe or loranthus, and the rock dove, which nests in oaks. These are all sexual emblems.
• The oak was held sacred by ancient Hebrews. Abraham saw the angels under an oak tree. Jacob buried the idol of Shechem under an oak. The oak in Shechem made Abimelech king. Isaiah said that idols were made of oak. The angel who gave Gideon his orders sat under the oak of Ophra. Absalom sustained his sacred thigh injury in an oak grove at Ephraim.
• Two black doves flew from Thebes in Egypt: one to Dodona and the other to Libyan Ammon in the oasis of Siwwa. They alighted on oak trees and proclaimed them oracles of Zeus, in human speech. The oracles were taken by priestesses who interpreted the sounds of the cooing of doves, the rustling of oak leaves and the clinking of brazen vessels that hung from the trees. The shrine of Zeus at Dodona, where an oak cult grew up, had oracular birds, a sacred spring, a sacred black dove and an iron basin. The black dove priestesses chewed acorns to control the oracle, as they listened to the wind in the trees for poetic inspiration. The iron basin was used as a gong to mimic the sound of thunder.
• The cult of the oracular oak is sacred to Dia/Dionne. Priestesses took oracles under oak trees by the way a man fell when he died.
• Hera left Zeus after a fight. To get her back he pretended to marry the nymph Plataea, cutting down an oak tree and dressing it as a bride. Hera tore off the bridal veil in anger, but became reconciled to her husband when she saw what lengths he had gone to in order to win her back.
• The Myrmidons were made by Zeus from ants climbing the trunk of a sacred oak on the island of Aegina that had grown from a Dodonian acorn. He did this in response to the prayers of Aecus, who had beseeched Zeus to repopulate his blighted island.
• When the baby Hermes stole Apollo's cows he disguised their tracks by covering their hooves with shoes made from the bark of a fallen oak tree. Erotic statues of Hermes were usually carved of oak.
• The Argo, Jason's ship, was built mostly of oaken timbers. It had an oracular beam of oak from Dodona that had been fitted into its prow by Athene. The Golden Fleece, stolen by Jason with the aid of Medea's magic, was found fastened to an oak tree and guarded by a lion.
• Erisichthion felled an oak tree sacred to Ceres that was inhabited by a nymph, drawing blood when he struck it with his ax. Ceres punished him by sending his entrails to Famine.
• Lycis purified initiates into the Mysteries of the Great Goddesses Demeter and Persephone in an oak coppice at Ardania.
• Orpheus led a dance of wild oak trees down the Pierian mountains.
• Dionysus saved the lives of his Wild Women, the Maenads, by turning them into oak trees after they had killed Orpheus for preaching against them. Orpheus, Zagreus and Actaeon were all killed with double-axes and then dismembered by the Maenads at Summer Solstice, in oak groves.
• Pan, son of the nymph Dryope and Faunus, son of Picus, were both hatched from the eggs of oak woodpeckers.
• Oak means door in many ancient languages. Duir, Janus and Hercules were all oak gods of the door. The White Goddess Cardea was the hinge on which the ancient Latin year swung.
• Roman awarded oak leaves to military heroes.
• The Virgins at the temple of Vesta in Rome burned fires of oak wood.
• The Roman Alban Holiday was the annual marriage feast of the Oak Queen, the nymph Egeria, to the Oak King of the year. The Vestal Virgins coupled with the companions of the oak king, secretly, in a dark sacred cave, just as they did during the Saturnalia. The new oak king was the child of the Oak Queen or of one of her vestal virgins.
• The Celtic battle goddess Macha collected her victims' heads for her acorn crop.
• Blodeuwedd tied Llew Llaw's hair to an oak branch and made him stand with one foot on the rim of a bath and the other on the haunch of a sacred beast, in order to inflict upon him the sacred thigh injury that would allow him to be her husband, and king. When he died his soul escaped in the form of an eagle and perched in an oak tree.
• Black Annis the Hag devoured children and hung their skins from an oak tree to dry.
• It was considered unlucky to cut down oak trees, which were believed to shriek and groan as they fell.
• Merlin prophesied the end of the old oak cult religion of the Druids and the rise of Christianity to King Vortigern and his druids by saying: And thus Janus shall never have priests again. His door will be shut and remain concealed in Ariadne's crannies.
• Llyr, the door, languishes forgotten in the castle of Arianrhod.
• Robin Hood was believed to reside in the log cut from sacred oak that was kept at the back of the fire.
• The central mystery of the oak cult was the suppression and ritual murder of the sacred king. Sacred kings of the oak cult include Hercules, Menoetius and Dryas. Midsummer Day was when the sacred king died and went to serve the goddess Carmenta/Cardea/Rhea/Delilah/Artemis Callistre/Callisto at the mill. He was burned alive or crucified on a t-shaped cross, and succeeded by his tanist who became the new consort of the Queen.
• Robert Graves described the death of Hercules in The White Goddess:

At Midsummer, at the end of a half-year reign, he is made drunk with mead and led into the middle of a circle of twelve stones arranged around an oak, in front of which stands an altar-stone; the oak has been lopped off until it is t-shaped. He is bound to it with willow thongs in the "fivefold bond" which joins wrists, necks and ankles together, beaten by his comrades until he faints, then flayed, blinded, castrated, impaled with a mistletoe stake, and finally hacked into joints on the altar stone. His blood is caught in a basin and used for sprinkling the whole tribe to make them vigorous and fruitful. The joints are roasted at twin fires of oak loppings, kindled with sacred fire prepared from a lightning-blasted oak or by twirling an alder- or cornel wood fire drill in an oak log. The tree is then uprooted and split into faggots which are added to the flames. The twelve merry-men rush into a wild figure-of-eight dance around the fires, singing ecstatically and tearing at the flesh with their teeth. The bloody remains are burned on the fire, all except the genitals and the head. These are put into an alder-wood boat and floated down a river to an islet, though the head is sometimes preserved for oracular use. His tanist succeeds him and reigns for the remainder of the year, when he is sacrificially killed by a new Hercules.

EUROPE:

• The oak was the most sacred tree of the Aryan peoples of Europe, the provider of food, housing and fire. The Oak Cult spread across Europe, from the Caucasus to the Atlantic, encompassing Celts, Slavs and Teutons. Houses in the river valleys of prehistoric northern Italy were built on oak piles. Archaeologists have found piles of acorns next to the remains of these houses. Primitive Europeans believed that oak fire strengthened the sun. Fire was kindled in ancient times by rubbing oak sticks together. Sacrifices were made to sacred oaks in Europe until well into the Middle Ages.
• The wolf is closely connected with the oak cult, as are doves. The climax of the orgiastic oak cult came at Summer Solstice, with the Dove Goddess. The woodpecker is the bird of the oak. The wren was substituted in Ireland. The bull symbolized both the god of thunder and the spirit of the oak.
• The oak leaf is the life giver, the holder of the essence of the holy potency of the tree.
• It was a crime to fell an oak tree in pagan Ireland. Mess, whose name means timber knots, was a female oak spirit. There was a grove of sacred oaks at Derry. Kildare, where the nuns of St. Brigit maintained the sacred fire, means Shrine of the Oak.
• Bushy oak, leafy oak.
  You tower above all trees.
      -Irish ballad
• In British folklore ancient, hollow trees (called bull oaks in England, bell oaks in Scotland and Ireland) are trees that stood in old sacred groves. They were often believed to be the home of spirits, elves, fairies or demons. You were supposed to turn your coat or cloak inside out to neutralize their magic:

  Turn your clokes
  For fairy folks Are in old oakes.

• Their spirits were believed to enter houses through the knotholes in oak timbers. The haunted oak of Nanneu was believed inhabited by spirits and demons.
• D, Duir, in the Ogham/Goidelic tree alphabet.
• At Loch Maree in Scotland, nails and coins were driven into the trunk of an oak tree with pieces of pilgrims' clothing, as offerings. Maree was originally Mo Righ, my king, a saint and a god.
• The rapid oak tree,
  Before him heaven and earth quake;
  In every land his name is mine.
  -Taliesin, The Battle of the Trees
• Oak trees were held sacred by Druids, who were priests of the oak god. The word Druid is said to come from the Welsh word derwydd, oakseer, which means poet. Other etymologists hold that it comes from the Greek word for oak, that Druid meant oak men.
• Druids stood their sacred circles of stones under the shadow of a spreading oak or in a grove of oak trees. Pliny says that the Druids believed that anything found growing on an oak tree had been sent from heaven, a sign that the god had chosen the tree and made it sacred. Mistletoe found on oaks was held especially sacred. The Druids cut it each year with a golden sickle in a ritual emasculation of the sacred oak, the royal sun disc. Mistletoe does not usually grow on oaks, so it is likely that they grafted it. They associated the oak with heavenly fire. An oak tree had to be more than 30 years old before Druids would harvest mistletoe from it.
• Ancient Prussians revered sacred oak trees. The chief oak in the forest at Romove had priests who tended a perpetual fire of oak wood. This tree, draped with a cloth, was considered the dwelling place of the god. The Prussians adored it and hung images from it. There was a sacred oak tree at Hesse called the Red Jove from which omens were drawn and to which sacrifices were made. Holy oaks were preserved in Germany into modern times. First fruits of the chase were hung on oaks in Saxony and Thuringian until the 13th century. Kirwaido, God's Mouth, ruled ancient Prussians in the name of the god. When he had become weak and sick he immolated himself atop a pile of straw and thorn bushes. The blaze was lit from the perpetual fire that burned before the holy oak tree. Estonians sacrificed oxen to oaks, with prayers for rain and good crops. They also annually smeared oak trees with the blood of beasts.
• Lithuanians offered sacrifices to oak trees for plentiful crops.
• Oak trees in Siberian groves were swathed in cloth and made offerings of kettles, reindeer hides, spoons and other valuable household articles. Orthodox Christians in Russia worshiped a holy oak until the 1870's. They fixed candles to its trunk and branches and prayed: "Holy oak hallelujah, pray for us. "
• Slavs sacrificed goats and bulls to Perun/Piorun/Pyerun/Peron, a thunder god, in a grove with an oak tree. A perpetual fire of oak wood was kept burning before an effigy of Peroun/Perun at Novgorod, where the death penalty was imposed for allowing the fire to go out.
• The Bohemian festival of the Little Daedala was held in an ancient oak grove, with boiled meat set out for the birds. When a raven took some meat and flew into an oak tree, that tree was felled. Its wood was made into an image which they dressed as a bride and drew to the river with bridesmaids beside it. A crowd then followed it to town, dancing and piping. The image was saved for the Great Daedala, held once every 60 years, when all the images were taken in carts in solemn procession to the river Asopus and then to the top of Mt. Cathaeron, where there was a wooden altar with a pile of brushwood atop it. Sacrificial animals, the images and the altar were consumed by fire.

ACORNS:

• Acorns, ground into flour and baked into cakes, were the original food of the European peoples, who worshiped the oak as the giver of food. Acorns were called oak apples. They are sacred to Alanus and a symbol of Hercules. Acorns were the Celtic symbol for Zeus, the Roman symbol of Jupiter. To Greeks and Romans the cupped acorn represented the penis glans.
• Circe, Daughter of the Sun, magician, fed acorns to the sailors of Ulysses after she had turned them into swine.
• In Libyan mythology Garamas, the first child of Mother Earth, rose from the plain and made an offering to her of the sweet acorn.

MAGIC:

• Planet: tree = Jupiter
• Number: 12
• Day: edible acorns = Thursday
• Language of Flowers: tree = Hospitality - leaves = Bravery
• Sex magic: for potency
• For protection during the waxing year
• Oak leaves for: power - healing - luck - health - protection - fertility - money spells - inner power
• Rain magic: Priests of Zeus dipped an oak branch into a spring on Mt. Lycaeus to make it rain by sympathetic magic. The spring water was said to send up a cloud of mist from which the rain fell. Tapping on an oak door is a charm to bring rain.
• Split an oak and pass yourself through it as a charm against fascination.
• To find out if a child is bewitched: in strict silence place three acorns in a basin of water under the child in its cradle. If they sink, the child is bewitched.
• Toothaches were cured in the 18th century by driving a nail into the tooth or gum until it bled, then driving the nail into an oak tree.
• In some places the need-fire was kindled by turning an oaken wheel from east to west over nine oaken spindles, or about an oaken pole. Need-fire is traditionally kindled with an oak log.

WHEEL OF THE YEAR:

• Station: June10 to July 7. Oak represents the waxing of the year.
• Sacred need-fire was kindled at Beltane with an oak fire drill.
• Oak wood is correct for Midsummer bonfires. Smoke of the green oak, burned in Midsummer Eve bonfires, is painful and gives inspiration to those who dance between the twin sacrificial fires:
          From him none may escape unhurt
          By love of him the head is set an-aching.
• Oak was burned in Midsummer fires for Vesta. In Greece and Rome the oak was sacred to the Midsummer Bride, the lion-guarded Queen of the Year.
• The Oak King was sacrificed on Midsummer Day.

Quercusrobar - Oak
    Large, handsome deciduous hardwood tree with rough, furrowed brown bark, crooked branches and knobby twigs. Native to the northern hemisphere, it has distinctly shaped irregular leaves and blooms from April to June. The male flowers are hanging catkins, the female appear in tiny clusters. The fruits are acorns that grow on long stalks.
    Collect bark and acorns. Bark can be peeled from branches early in the spring, removing the outer layers to expose the smooth, grayish brown inner bark with its silvery sheen, which is then sun dried.

MEDICINE:

• Decongestant - astringent - controls hemorrhages
• Decoction of bark for: diarrhea - gastrointestinal catarrh - in bath or compresses for: rash - frostbite - with chamomile for hemorrhage

MODES:
infusion - tincture - poultice - mellite - decoction - powder - fluid extract - medicinal wine
USES:

• Provides excellent timber
• Oak bark can be used to smoke fish

ANIMAL KINGDOM: Acorns were used to fatten pigs in ancient times.

Quercus glandiumspiritus- Spirit of Acorn
MEDICINE:

• Spirit distilled from tincture of acorns for: gout- vertigo - gas - water retention - chronic spleen complaints - liver complaints - old malaria cases - to remove alcohol craving. Dosage: 10 drops to 1 teaspoon, 3 to 4 times a day. It may cause diarrhea.
• Trituration of the acorn, at 3rd potency, for: spleen - gas - malaria - alcoholism

Quercus petraea - English Oak
MYTH: Held especially sacred by the Druids.

Quercus alba - North American White Oak
MAGIC: Language of Flowers: Independence
USES: Yields excellent timber.

Quercus suber - Cork Oak
Mediterranean variety whose spongy bark yields commercial cork.

Quercus virginiana- Live Oak
Ornamental tree of southern North America.

MAGIC:

• Language of Flowers: Liberty
• "I saw in Louisiana a live oak growing,
  All alone it stood and moss hung down from its branches . . .
  I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it and twined around it a little moss,
  And brought it away, and I have placed it in my room, . . .
  a curious token, it makes me think of manly love."
                  -Walt Whitman, I Saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing

Quercus ilex
NAMES: Holly Oak - Ilex - Evergreen Oak - Scarlet Oak - Bloody Oak - Holm Oak - Prickly Oak
Large trees with straggling branches and prickly evergreen leaves that grow in hot, dry places. They are called the evergreen twin of the oak because they resemble it in size and bark. Their trunks yield a fragrant, resinous juice.
MYTH:

• A grove of evergreen oaks at Corinth was sacred to the Furies.
• The Fates had a sacred grove of evergreen oaks at Titane, where there was an outdoor altar.
• Julius Caesar chopped down a sacred grove of Dodonian oaks, holly oaks and alder at Marseilles because it was in the way of his plans for the fortification of the city. He had to swing the first ax himself in order to persuade others to begin the desecration.
• T, Tinne, in the Ogham/Goidelic tree alphabet.

MAGIC:
Planet: tree = Mars
WHEEL OF THE YEAR:
Like holly, it rules the waning part of the year.

Quercus coccinus
NAMES: Kerm Oak - Kermes Oak - Arabic: Qirmiz
Small evergreen Mediterranean tree that hosts kermes, small red cocchineal insects.

MYTH:

• Sacred to El.
• When Theseus sailed for Crete with the other young people who had been chosen as victims for the minotaur, Aegus gave him a red sail that had been dyed with the juice of the kerm oak berry. He was to hoist this as a sign of victory on the return voyage.
• The kerm oak is the tree of the tanist who kills the sacred king. The faces of sacred kings were stained red with dye from kerm berries.
• Emperors were crowned in purple boots with red heels. Scarlet leather, dyed with kerm berries, was stretched over oaken heels to make the boots.

MAGIC:
Day: Tuesday
USES:
Royal scarlet dye and an aphrodisiac were made from the bodies of pregnant female kermes in ancient times.